Iranian Director Jafar Panahi's Struggle for Freedom

The plight of Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, banned by his own government from directing movies for the next 20 years, is so full of jaw-dropping, Kafkaesque ironies that it would take a director of Pahani's gifts to make a proper movie out of it. (In fact, he has.)

In the latest bizarre twist, the Iranian government has criticized the Cannes organizers, not for showing the arrested Iranian filmmakers' work, but for the festival organizers' banning of Danish director Lars von Trier for his ill-conceived jokey comments expressing sympathy with Hitler. That was an act of "fascist behavior," wrote Iranian Vice Minister of Culture Javad Shamaqdari in a letter. That's pretty rich coming from the government that is suppressing Panahi and Rasoulof's free expression.

Read on for a brief rundown of Panahi's troubled history, the shows of support for him from Hollywood filmmakers and international festivals, and a video excerpt of Panahi's forbidden movie.